Flavored Houjicha? YES, please! Toasted Marshmallow that happens to be VEGAN, YES, indeed! A roasty and toasty green tea that shares its blended base with white tea, too? I’m TOTALLY interested! It’s Toasted Marshmallow from 52 Teas!
Anne at 52 Teas really has some amazing VEGAN marshmallow flavored teas! Usually made with Marshmallow Root – such is the case with this specific tea – that is.
Organic ingredients in this tea include roasted green tea, white tea, marshmallow root, vanilla beans, and natural flavors. It’s sweet, creamy, a tad toasted and roasted and woodsy. It’s NOT bitter. It’s VERY well rounded and everything comes full circle here!
The green tea used is Houjicha and the white tea used is Shou Mei. They pair PERFECTLY here. It spurs the question – why don’t other companies pair these two teas more often!? They should! I’m glad 52 Teas jumped on it before others discovered the amazing natural flavor of the two paired together!
YUM! I think I will have another cup…of 5!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green Tea
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for the blends that are.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Molasses Spice Cookie Honeybush fromm 52Teas. . .
I used this tea as an experimental “guinea pig” in an attempt to figure out if this article was true.
For those of you who are busy today, the upshot of the article was that the “scientific” best way to make tea is to microwave it.
I made this tea a few weeks ago (traditionally), and forgot to review it. But I have a pretty good memory of how it was. So I decided to drop the tea into my gravity steeper and zap the whole shebang for a minute and a half.
The result: weak tea that wasn’t even hot.
I put the tea in there for another minute and a half. Then I left the tea in the steeper for anther 5 minutes. The result was the same basic tea that I’d made the old-fashioned way. But with more work.
Enough experimenting. Let’s get to the review.
This is a great chai slammed together with sweet honeybush. The creator of the tea was worried there wasn’t enough cinnamon, but I think that the lesser amount of cinnamon allows the other flavors a moment in the spotlight.
The honeybush is very sweet and creamy. It’s a great contrast against the chai. The result is kind of a gingerbread/snickerdoodle vibe. I see where the author was going with that. It’s not my favorite kind of cookie, so I don’t have a strong point of reference, but I have eaten chunks of gingerbread houses*, and I think it’s close.
* It’s a Christmas tradition. I start devouring scraps. Sometimes off people’s works-in-progress.
Happy sipping, Internet!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Honeybush
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for teas that are.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Pumpkin Juice Green Tea from 52Teas. . . . #allthingspumpkin
When I was in University, my roommate and I used to like to host themed potlucks. Something about putting a theme on it encouraged people to really go all out. One of our potluck was fantasy-themed. We encouraged our friends to bring foods inspired by their favorite books, TV shows, movies, etc. Harry Potter was definitely a popular inspiration for many. Personally, I made Butterbeer while others brought Cauldron Cakes and Pumpkin Pasties. One friend even brought cupcakes decorated as the Golden Snitch, complete with wings. Pumpkin juice didn’t make an appearance though so this is the first time I am trying a real life interpretation of this Harry Potter drink…
Now that I am drinking it, I can see where 52 Teas was coming from when they created this flavor. It is light but still tastes like pumpkin. Not just pumpkin spice but actual pumpkin, sweet and smooth. Though, pumpkin spice does trickle in nearing the end of the sip, ginger lingering in the aftertaste. The pineapple, however, is the key. It provides some much needed sweetness and brightness to elevate this to a “juice”. That to me is what sets this apart.
When this tea sample arrived from CuppaGeek, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I don’t know if this is exactly what I pictured when reading about pumpkin juice in the books, although I don’t think it was ever described so much as just mentioned throughout the series which means it is open to interpretation.
With that said, it is certainly a tasty tea.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green Tea
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
I’m a huge Harry Potter fan and have been for a lot of years so this year as my Halloween offering, I decided I wanted to celebrate my favorite books with a tribute to one of the wizarding world’s favorite juices: Pumpkin Juice!
Having never actually tasted pumpkin juice, I googled “pumpkin juice” for some ideas on recipes for it. There are a few different recipes online for pumpkin juice and each of them were a little different. Some were a combination of orange juice and pumpkin juice – which sounded interesting! Another included dried apricots instead of the orange juice – also interesting! Others were made with peach or pear juice. But the recipe that appealed to me most was one that combined pumpkin, apple juice, pineapple juice and spices. I thought that the apple would add some pleasant sweetness to the savory quality of the pumpkin and the pineapple juice would add some brightness to the overall flavor.
I started with a base of fair-trade, rainforest alliance certified Satemwa estate green teas (OP1 & Zomba Steamed) and added chunks of dried pumpkin, freeze-dried apples and pineapple, allspice, cinnamon, ginger and touch of freshly shaved nutmeg. The fruits do soften the flavor of the pumpkin somewhat however, the overall flavor is quite autumn-y and delicious.
Taster size is approximately 15g.
ingredients: fair trade green teas and pumpkin.
organic ingredients: apples, pineapple, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and natural flavors.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Caramel Apple Oolong V.2 from 52Teas. . . .
Charcoal baked oolong….interesting! Ive never heard of charcoal baked oolong before or seen it in any other blends so of course this was an intriguing blend to me.
The dry leaf of this one smelled like apple crisp! Once steeped, it smelled slightly grassy and like green apples. I’m not quite sure what charcoal tastes like, but I can taste a slight smokiness to this blend and i’m going to attribute it to the charcoal baked oolong. The taste also was slightly grassy like green tea and i’m going to attribute that to the oolong as well. As far as caramel goes, I could taste it as I swallowed and definitely on the aftertaste. But, cinnamon apple? Honestly I feel like the charcoal baked oolong and the caramel kind of overpowered the cinnamon apple flavor a bit. I really couldn’t detect as much of the cinnamon or the apple as I had been hoping for.
However, I did find this blend comforting and delicious regardless. It was perfect for being snowed in. I was also really glad I tried this oolong because now I can say I’ve had charcoal baked oolong! It just sounds so unique and it is definitely a must try. I saw that this blend was actually re-blend, as it was named “version 2”. I wish I had tried version 1 so that I could compare it, but I never had. In any case, I will definitely be finishing up my sample of this one and would recommend that you give it a try!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
Some time ago, shortly after I started doing this thing as the Mad Tea Artist, one of my online friends suggested that I create a caramel apple Oolong and he suggested using a roasted Oolong base. I liked the idea but the thing was that Frank had already crafted a Caramel Apple Oolong using a Fujian Oolong. (Click here to read my original review* of that tea.)
So here is a tea that was previously imagined and then later re-imagined based on an inspiration from a tea friend. I started with a charcoal roasted TieGuanYin which is delightfully nutty and sweet. To this, I added a combination of freeze-dried apples: Granny Smith and Fuji (which, interestingly enough, are my two daughter’s favorite apples. Amethyst loves Granny Smith and Lilith loves Fuji.) I added some caramel essence and then – just because I felt that it needed some warmth, I added some cinnamon.
This is a tea that’s deliciously, apple-y sweet but also pleasantly spiced – with a creamy, nutty background of a truly delightful Oolong tea.
Taster size is approximately 15g
ingredients: oolong tea, organic apples, organic cinnamon and organic natural flavors
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Chocolate Eclair Tea. . . .#52Teas
My sister has never been a lover of tea. For a long time she could not understand my love of the beverage and it was only recently that she has started actually trying teas. It started with afternoon teas, at those she found a couple she liked and started to build a small stash, then I learned that she was actually drinking her teas nightly, and now she’s starting to get it. That is awesome in one respect but now she’s moving in on my teas, which I guess is fine but occasionally it means I am losing my very own mug.
For example, CuppaGeek sent me a 1-2 cup sample of this to try, however before that arrived, I ended up ordering myself a taster packet from 52 Teas. Thank goodness I did because when I brewed the sample from CuppaGeek, my sister decided to give it a try and then she decided we were “sharing” except the mug just kept moving closer and closer to her and soon this was gone and I had barely a sip. I guess you could say she was a fan.
Today she is not at our home so I knew I could actually get to drink my own cup and it is perfection. This is actually quite accurate to its namesake which is surprising since an eclair seems like a pretty complex food to capture in liquid form. Nonetheless, this is silky milk chocolate icing and creamy vanilla. The black base gives this a sturdy foundation but also imparts a breadiness that plays out as the choux pastry. The components of an eclair are all represented and they work together to create one awesome tea.
Honestly, now that I have had it a few times, I think I should have just committed to the large pack because this really is GOOD.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black Tea
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description
This tea is no longer available but click below for teas that are.